Эд Макбейн: Learning to Kill: Stories

“Let’s get out of here,” Angela said.

“No. Wait a minute.”

He knelt down beside Andy. “You cut?” he asked.

Andy nodded.

The boy kept looking at him. He saw the lettering on the jacket then, THE ROYALS. He turned to Angela.

“He’s a Royal,” he said.

“Let’s... what... what do you want to do, Freddie?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to get mixed up in this. He’s a Royal. We help him, and the Guardians’ll be down on our necks. I don’t want to get mixed up in this, Angela.”

“Is he... is he hurt bad?”

“Yeah, it looks that way.”

“What shall we do?”

“I don’t know.”

“We can’t leave him here in the rain.” Angela hesitated. “Can we?”

“If we get a cop, the Guardians’ll find out who,” Freddie said. “I don’t know, Angela. I don’t know.”

Angela hesitated a long time before answering. Then she said, “I have to get home, Freddie. My people will begin to worry.”

“Yeah,” Freddie said. He looked at Andy again. “You all right?” he asked. Andy lifted his face from the sidewalk, and his eyes said, Please, please help me, and maybe Freddie read what his eyes were saying, and maybe he didn’t.

Behind him, Angela said, “Freddie, let’s get out of here! Please!”

There was urgency in her voice, urgency bordering on the edge of panic. Freddie stood up. He looked at Andy again, and then mumbled, “I’m sorry,” and then he took Angela’s arm and together they ran toward the neon splash at the other end of the alley.

Why, they’re afraid of the Guardians, Andy thought in amazement. But why should they be? I wasn’t afraid of the Guardians. I never turkeyed out of a rumble with the Guardians. I got heart. But I’m bleeding.

The rain was soothing somehow. It was a cold rain, but his body was hot all over, and the rain helped to cool him. He had always liked rain. He could remember sitting in Laura’s house one time, the rain running down the windows, and just looking out over the street, watching the people running from the rain. That was when he’d first joined the Royals. He could remember how happy he was the Royals had taken him. The Royals and the Guardians, two of the biggest. He was a Royal. There had been meaning to the title.

Now, in the alley, with the cold rain washing his hot body, he wondered about the meaning. If he died, he was Andy. He was not a Royal. He was simply Andy, and he was dead. And he wondered suddenly if the Guardians who had ambushed him and knifed him had ever once realized he was Andy. Had they known that he was Andy, or had they simply known that he was a Royal wearing a purple silk jacket? Had they stabbed him, Andy, or had they only stabbed the jacket and the title, and what good was the title if you were dying?

I’m Andy, he screamed wordlessly. For Christ’s sake, I’m Andy!

An old lady stopped at the other end of the alley. The garbage cans were stacked there, beating noisily in the rain. The old lady carried an umbrella with broken ribs, carried it with all the dignity of a queen. She stepped into the mouth of the alley, a shopping bag over one arm. She lifted the lids of the garbage cans delicately, and she did not hear Andy grunt because she was a little deaf and because the rain was beating a steady relentless tattoo on the cans. She had been searching and foraging for the better part of the night. She collected her string and her newspapers, and an old hat with a feather on it from one of the garbage cans, and a broken footstool from another of the cans. And then she delicately replaced the lids and lifted her umbrella high and walked out of the alley mouth with queenly dignity. She had worked swiftly and soundlessly, and now she was gone.

The alley looked very long now. He could see people passing at the other end of it, and he wondered who the people were, and he wondered if he would ever get to know them, wondered who it was on the Guardians who had stabbed him, who had plunged the knife into his body. “That’s for you, Royal!” the voice had said, and then the footsteps, his arms being released by the others, the fall to the pavement. “That’s for you, Royal!” Even in his pain, even as he collapsed, there had been some sort of pride in knowing he was a Royal. Now there was no pride at all. With the rain beginning to chill him, with the blood pouring steadily between his fingers, he knew only a sort of dizziness, and within the giddy dizziness, he could only think, I want to be Andy.

It was not very much to ask of the world.

He watched the world passing at the other end of the alley. The world didn’t know he was Andy. The world didn’t know he was alive. He wanted to say, “Hey, I’m alive! Hey, look at me! I’m alive! Don’t you know I’m alive? Don’t you know I exist?”

He felt weak and very tired. He felt alone and wet and feverish and chilled, and he knew he was going to die now, and the knowledge made him suddenly sad. He was not frightened. For some reason, he was not frightened. He was only filled with an overwhelming sadness that his life would be over at sixteen. He felt all at once as if he had never done anything, never seen anything, never been anywhere. There were so many things to do, and he wondered why he’d never thought of them before, wondered why the rumbles and the jumps and the purple jacket had always seemed so important to him before, and now they seemed like such small things in a world he was missing, a world that was rushing past at the other end of the alley.

I don’t want to die, he thought. I haven’t lived yet

It seemed very important to him that he take off the purple jacket. He was very close to dying, and when they found him, he did not want them to say, “Oh, it’s a Royal.” With great effort, he rolled over onto his back. He felt the pain tearing at his stomach when he moved, a pain he did not think was possible. But he wanted to take off the jacket. If he never did another thing, he wanted to take off the jacket. The jacket had only one meaning now, and that was a very simple meaning.

If he had not been wearing the jacket, he would not have been stabbed. The knife had not been plunged in hatred of Andy. The knife hated only the purple jacket. The jacket was a stupid meaningless thing that was robbing him of his life. He wanted the jacket off his back. With an enormous loathing, he wanted the jacket off his back.

He lay struggling with the shiny wet material. His arms were heavy, and pain ripped fire across his body whenever he moved. But he squirmed and fought and twisted until one arm was free and then the other, and then he rolled away from the jacket and lay quite still, breathing heavily, listening to the sound of his breathing and the sound of the rain and thinking, Rain is sweet, I’m Andy.

She found him in the alleyway a minute past midnight. She left the dance to look for him, and when she found him she knelt beside him and said, “Andy, it’s me, Laura.” He did not answer her. She backed away from him, tears springing into her eyes, and then she ran from the alley hysterically and did not stop running until she found the cop. And now, standing with the cop, she looked down at him, and the cop rose and said, “He’s dead,” and all the crying was out of her now. She stood in the rain and said nothing, looking at the dead boy on the pavement, and looking at the purple jacket that rested a foot away from his body. The cop picked up the jacket and turned it over in his hands.

“A Royal, huh?” he said.

The rain seemed to beat more steadily now, more fiercely.

She looked at the cop and, very quietly, she said, “His name is Andy.”

The cop slung the jacket over his arm. He took out his black pad, and he flipped it open to a blank page.